Pages

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Elimination Diet Phase One Recipe: Vegetarian Soup For The Soul

Another soup? Really? I'm starting to think I should rename my blog, The Daily Soup. I hope you'll bear with me as I can't seem to stop making soup. There's just something so comforting about it, especially in the winter. This particular soup is a great phase one recipe for the elimination diet I'm following, but don't be turned away if you're not following that diet. This soup tastes so good, I'm making another batch for dinner tonight. In fact, I can honestly say that this is my favorite soup that I've made so far. The best thing about it is that it's extremely healthy for you and is a great low-fat, low-calorie soup to have as a side with your dinner. This would also be a great idea for anyone trying to lose weight and looking for something comforting they can have at night without adding too many extra calories. And if you're just looking for a delicious soup to feed your family? Be assured that it got the thumbs up from my boyfriend too. After tasting a sip, he said, "Oh my God! Why does that taste so good?!" I love when I make something that gets a reaction like that out of him!

* To bake the squash, I cut it in half, scraped out the seeds, and baked it upside down in an inch of water at 4oo degrees for an hour. It made about one cup of squash. Sweet dumpling squash has a delicate and sweet taste that works wonderfully for this soup, but if you can't find one, I'm sure any type of winter squash, like an acorn or butternut, would work fine too.

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic, and saute until just beginning to turn translucent, about 2 minutes

Add the carrots and celery. Saute another 2-3 minutes.

Add 4 cups of water. Add the ginger into the soup.

Bring to a boil. Turn to low and simmer for 3o minutes with the top on.

After the soup has simmered, put the squash in a blender with 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Blend until even. Add to the soup and stir in.

Add parsley. Add salt to taste. Simmer another 5 minutes

Serves 4

And before I forget: in elimination diet news, I've cut maple syrup, dates, and agave nectar out of my okay food list. Although these are all items that are allowed in phase one, I realized after a couple of days of having them that they were triggering my urge to overeat and binge on sugar. So before I move on to phase two, the maple syrup is going to the back of the fridge, the agave nectar to the back of the cupboard, and I won't be buying any more dates for now. I'm a bit disappointed that I can't handle these items, but I know myself well enough to be assured I'll do better on the diet without them.

22 comments:

Thanks Brian! Part of the reason I'm blogging about this is that I know if I tell my readers what I'm doing, I'll stick to it. I don't know if I would have stuck to this diet if I were doing it on my own...

Soup sounds perfect today (she says as she sniffles and tries not to use her sore throat). ;-) Honestly, this recipe looks wonderful. I'm about ready to make up a batch. Maybe it will help me beat this cold.

OMG good luck with this..I remember about 5 yrs ago when i finally had to get honest w/ my food allergies and figure out what worked. First gluten was out. Then dairy. Then soy. I can have some trace soy or minor amts but gluten & dairy I will live in the bathroom for a week AND have a million other symptoms which i linked to in today's post. And also my other allergies, fish, shellfish, i end up in the hospital.

GOOD LUCK finding out what it is. If you're not seeing marked improvements within 2 weeks, elim more things. Onceyou get to a symptom free place for at least 2 weeks, add foods back in, one by one, pausing at least 3 days. It can takes Months/YEARS sometimes to truly find everything so dont give up!

That soup broth has such a gorgeous color---very, very appealing! Just looking at the pictures lets me know that I agree with your boyfriend's assessment. :-)

Wow, on taking out more items from your diet. Ah, the sweet stuff ... usually more of a nemesis than most of us realize until we take it out of our diets. Thanks for the inspiration, Iris! I don't think Mr. GFE would be as encouraging as your boyfriend on my ideal diet though. Oh, he'd encourage me (and has), but he'd still want the other stuff, too. Sigh.

That soup sounds delightful. I am definitely throwing it in my rotation in the next week - as I'm likely to get tired of smoothies for breakfast AND dinner while I do my detox/elimination diet. Too bad about dates/syrup/agave! I always love dates, but I can eat too many too!

I'm no good with dates or anything sweet either. I LOVE anything sweet! The more I eat, the more I eat. I've never heard of a dumpling squash before. Maybe I can find one here. I would really like to make this soup, just like you did.

Delicious! My daughter is wanting to experiment with elimination diets this year. She is very sensitive and suspects that gluten is not her friend. Hard in the city for university though, she ends up eating whatever a lot.

Hello there!Thanks so much for stopping by my blog. I love soups too!!I'm interested in this elimination diet. We just started the gluten free change, and I'm not sure how soon we are supposed to start seeing results. As a whole, we all have more energy, but my oldest daughter who has some learning difficulites - trouble concentrating, feeling cloudy headed, hasn't seen a whole lot of change yet. I saw somewhere where that could take awhile.I'm now thinking maybe we need to eliminate dairy too..I'll be back to visit and I'm DEFINITELY going to check out your elimination diet information.

just FYI..Agave is a big lie- it was marketed to make it sound like it was not a glycemic product..but IT IS..do some research- we stopped using it and we use raw honey, xylitol and erythritol...RAW honey is food and good for just about 'everything'...

This recipe is from 2010. I don't really use agave nectar anymore, although I've learned to be wary of a lot of products, and just go by how I feel when I eat them, not what research (or the internet) tell me.